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Economy Archive
Economy_Archive
2009 News and local events related to both the US and local economy
Upcoming Events.
US Economic News 2009.
Local economic News 2009.
LWVCO Fiscal News_09.
Economic References 2009.
Past Events 2009.
Upcoming Events
US Economic News 2009
*12/4/09 NY Times: U.S. Economy Lost Only 11,000 Jobs in November By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ
In the strongest employment report since the recession began nearly two years ago, the government said Friday that the nation's employers had all but stopped shedding jobs in November, taking some of the pressure off of President Obama to come up with a wide-ranging jobs creation program. The Labor Department reported that the United States economy lost 11,000 jobs in November, and the unemployment rate fell to 10 percent, down from 10.2 percent in October.
The government also significantly revised its September and October job loss estimates. September's data was adjusted to show a loss of 139,000 jobs instead of 219,000, and in October 111,000 jobs were lost, instead of 190,000. Even allowing for the November loss, the revisions added 148,000 people to the list of those employed in the United States in November...
*11/29/09 NY Times: Food Stamp Use Soars, and Stigma FadesBy JASON DePARLE and ROBERT GEBELOFF
MARTINSVILLE, Ohio -- With food stamp use at record highs and climbing every month, a program once scorned as a failed welfare scheme now helps feed one in eight Americans and one in four children...
*11/24/09 Durango Herald: Tax credit gives home sales boost
Oct. increase was largest in last decade by Alan Zibel
AP Real Estate Writer
WASHINGTON - First-time buyers taking advantage of a special tax credit gave sales of existing homes in October their biggest surge in a decade, raising hopes for a turnaround in the housing market and pleasing Wall Street. The National Association of Realtors said resales rose 10.1 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.1 million in October, from 5.5 million in September. It was the biggest monthly increase in a decade and far better than what economists expected, according to Thomson Reuters...
*11/22/09 NY Times: Wave of Debt Payments Facing U.S. Government By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
WASHINGTON -- The United States government is financing its more than trillion-dollar-a-year borrowing with i.o.u.'s on terms that seem too good to be true. Treasury officials now face a trifecta of headaches: a mountain of new debt, a balloon of short-term borrowings that come due in the months ahead, and interest rates that are sure to climb back to normal as soon as the Federal Reserve decides that the emergency has passed...
*11/7/09 NYTimes: Broader Measure of U.S. Unemployment Stands at 17.5%By DAVID LEONHARDT
For all the pain caused by the Great Recession, the job market still was not in as bad shape as it had been during the depths of the early 1980s recession -- until now. In all, more than one out of every six workers -- 17.5 percent -- were unemployed or underemployed in October. The previous recorded high was 17.1 percent, in December 1982...
*10/28/09 NY Times: U.S. Economy Began to Grow Again in the Third Quarter By CATHERINE RAMPELL
Ending the longest contraction since World War II, the United States economy finally grew in the third quarter of this year, the Commerce Department said on Thursday. The nation's gross domestic product expanded at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the three months ending in September, matching the economy's average annual growth rate from the last 80 years...
*10/2/09 NY Times: Jobs Report Highlights Uncertainty of U.S. Recovery By PETER S. GOODMAN
The American economy shed another 263,000 jobs in September and the unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent, reinforcing a broad assumption that many more months of lean times lie ahead for working people...
*9/21/09 Voice of America News: Research Group: US Economy Will Improve
The U.S. economy will improve over the next few months, according to a study published Monday by a business research group.The Conference Board says its index of leading indicators rose six-tenths of a percent in August. It is the fifth month in a row that the index has predicted gains...
*9/16/09 Denver Post: Bernanke: Recession likely over, misery isn't
By Jeannine Aversa
WASHINGTON -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Tuesday that the worst recession since the 1930s is probably over, although he cautioned that pain -- especially for the nearly 15 million unemployed Americans -- will persist. Bernanke said the economy likely is growing now, but he warned that won't be sufficient to prevent the unemployment rate, now at a 26-year high of 9.7 percent, from rising...
*8/21/09 NY Times: Fed Chairman Says American Economy Is Poised to Grow By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. -- Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, offered his most hopeful assessment in more than a year on Friday, asserting that the prospects for a return to growth in the near term appear good...
Local Economic News 2009
*Durango Herald:State's jobless rate should moderate Economist: The worst is behind us
by Joe Hanel
Herald Denver Bureau
DENVER - The new year will not bring a new economy, a prominent Colorado forecaster said Monday. Job losses in 2010 will increase in La Plata County and the state as a whole for a second consecutive year, according to a report by the University of Colorado business school report that drew on advice from 90 experts. However, the economy will stabilize in the second half of 2010, setting up for a recovery the next two years, the report said...
*12/9/09 Durango Herald: City OKs $46M budget
Sales tax drop leads council to cut $3 million
by Garrett Andrews
Herald Staff Writer
The Durango City Council unanimously approved City Manager Ron LeBlanc's final budget at Tuesday's special meeting, but his proposed legislative policy agenda ran into dispute...
* 11/11/09 Durango Herald:Nonprofits shorted by city budget
Local groups appeal to councilors even as revenue keeps declining by Garrett Andrews
Durango could be approaching crises on several fronts + health care, emergency services, cultural literacy + if the city cuts what it wants from community agencies, said representatives of some of those groups at Tuesday's City Council study session.
Councilors heard presentations from Durango Fire & Rescue Authority, Mercy Health Clinic, the Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College, the Animas Museum, United Way and Southwest Colorado Mental Health Center. All receive funding from other governments, and all cuts could hurt Durango for years...
*10/29/09 Durango Herald: $286 million more cut from budget
Colleges feel worst pain; Ritter warns more coming by Joe Hanel
Herald Denver Bureau
DENVER - Now playing at the state Capitol: "Saw IV." Gov. Bill Ritter announced an additional $286 million in cuts Wednesday, the fourth round of cuts since the recession hit Colorado last year. Another sequel will come Nov. 10 when Ritter releases the 2010-11 budget. It will include "significant" cuts to higher education, which so far has dodged the worst of the recession because of federal stimulus money...
*10/14/09 Durango Herald: Recession rewrites La Plata County's budget
As property values fall, more pain will be expected in 2011 budget by Katie Burford
La Plata County, bracing for years of declining property-tax revenue, is looking at freezing merit raises and eliminating five vacant positions in its 2010 budget. In the draft budget, presented for the first time to county commissioners Tuesday, the county projected $68 million in revenue next year, a $3.5 million drop from last year. Expenditures were projected at $70.4 million, a 10 percent cut from last year...
*10/2/09 Durango Herald: Amdt. 23 may cut school budgets by Joe Hanel
Herald Staff Writer
*9/22/09 Bell Policy Center - Denver:Legislative economists project $240 million shortfall
Economists with the Legislative Council project that General Fund revenues in the current fiscal year will come in $240 million below budgeted appropriations. This is even after the $320 million in cuts Gov. Bill Ritter announced in August...
* 9/2/09 Durango Herald: Fiscal analyst: How big should government be?
by Katie Burford Herald Staff Writer
A question being passionately debated across the country as the future of health-care reform hangs in the balance is: How big do we want government to be?
The answer to that was the subject of a presentation given by Carol Hedges, senior fiscal analyst for the nonprofit Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute, to a group of public officials in Durango on Tuesday.
Later in the day, she spoke at the Durango Public Library. She said that Colorado, following a tradition of rugged individualism, has long fallen on the side of lower taxes, less government. As a result, the state ranks close to the bottom in spending per capita on everything including education and highways...
*July 19, 2009 Denver Post: Colorado's budget: Untie state's hands as published July 19 in the Denver Post,
By Wade Buchanan (Bell Policy Center), Chris WatneyColorado Children's Campaign) and Carol Hedges (Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute)
This year, Colorado's General Fund revenues will hit their lowest point in recent
history, and the implications are dire for the state and its residents.
Revenues will fall to 3.2 percent of the overall state economy. That's 24 percent below
the average for the last 28 years, and 11 percent below the lowest point reached in the
recession of 2001-03...
*July 2009 Bell Policy Center:Looking Forward: Colorado's fiscal prospects amid a financial crisis
This report projects the amount Colorado would need to spend to maintain state services at 2007 levels through fiscal year 2012-13 and the amount of revenues that will be generated to pay for them. The costs of services were estimated based on factors that drive the budget, such as the number of students in college, inflation rates and the number of prisoners. It updates our December 2007 Looking Forward report...
*July 9, 2009 Colorado Fiscal Policy Center: TESTIMONY AS PREPARED FOR THE
INTERIM COMMITTEE ON LONG TERM FISCAL STABILITY
Carol Hedges, Senior Fiscal Analyst
The current crisis is a short term economic phenomenon but its depth and intensity in Colorado is attributable to a fiscal structure that historically reduces the amount of money available for public activities. Evidence of the effects of that continuous reduction in revenue abounds. The result? A perpetual budget crisis...
LWVCO Fiscal News_09
*9/26/09 LWVCO League Day presentation:The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 by Mark Cavanaugh, Governor's Economic Recovery Team
*9/26/09 LWVCO League Day presentation:ADEQUATE FUNDING FOR THE NEEDS OF THE STATE vs FISCAL CRISIS by Phyllis Horney, LWVCO Fiscal Chair
As everyone well knows, we have severe economic problems in this country. Colorado is reeling from a shortage of tax revenue. This has affected the 2008/09 and 2009/10 budgets with a shortage of over a BILLION dollars, and shortages will probably continue through 2013 In Colorado taxes are low and services are lean; both among the lowest in the country. Everyone is suffering, and it is no different for the State of Colorado...
Economic References 2009
*10/5/09 New Yorker Magazine:Rational Irrationality-
The real reason that capitalism is so crash-prone. by John Cassidy
Most of the time, financial markets are pretty calm, trading is orderly, and participants can buy and sell in large quantities. Whenever a crisis hits, however, the biggest players--banks, investment banks, hedge funds--rush to reduce their exposure, buyers disappear, and liquidity dries up. Where previously there were diverse views, now there is unanimity: everybody's moving in lockstep...
*8/18/09 recovery.gov: Investment Amount by Agency in Colorado
Past Events 2009
*On Tuesday, September 1, 2009 from 7-9pm at the Durango Public Library, the League of Women Voters of La Plata County and the City of Durango will co-sponsor an educational event titled Colorado's Budget Crisis
You are invited to hear Carol Hedges, Senior Fiscal Analyst with the Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute (CFPI) in Denver. She will be discussing the newly projected $320 million shortfall, how that might be bridged, what might be cut out, etc. She will take questions at the end.
Click budget crisis to view the flier.
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Last revised: September 5, 2010 12:48 PDT.
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